MovieChat Forums > Twelve O'Clock High (1950) Discussion > Someone please tell me why this is not i...

Someone please tell me why this is not in top 250 of all time


This movie was a masterpiece. One of the best war movies ever made ( a little historically incaccurate). Gregory Peck was brilliant.

So why is it not in the top 250. My theory is that the lack of baby boomers and older genre people using net stop the old classics from getting an opportunity to be voted on with the same bulk as the LOTR and Star Wards and Sci Fi geeks out there. This movie is 55 years old and still captures me when I watch it.

What do you all think?

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12 O'Clock High is indeed one of the best films ever to come out of World War II. Unfortunately, it is ignored because too many young Americans have no sense of history, and no interest in older black-and-white films. What a shame.

I recently heard a young woman I know refer to "an old Eddie Murphy movie". Now, if you are in your 20s, as she is, I guess there is such a thing as an "old" Eddie Murphy movie, but to my 51 year old ears, that sounded very strange! I mentioned some truly old classic films -- 12 O'Clock High, High Noon, Judgement at Nuremburg, Stalag 17 -- and she had never heard of any of them. She does not know what she is missing...

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The top 250 isn't a list of the most popular films in the world, it's a list of the films most popular with the demographic that votes for things on the internet. This is likely to be a minority percentage made up mostly of people in their teens and early 20s - the same people who buy singles and reshape the course of reality TV. Lord of the Rings has such a high number of votes because it had such a huge audience and that audience came home and voted for it, bandying around the nines and the tens in their excitement. People that vote for Twelve O'Clock High are likely to have stumbled across it on television or some tiny backstreet movie house. Those people aren't going to worry about voting it into the top 250, and if they are, there's a whole lot less of them. Don't worry about. There's too many lists in the world now anyway.

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Because the voters are not only who like classic films, we are in a minority. Most films made today have more than 2 thousands votes and most of the classics have less than 100 votes. I've never worried about the top 250. Going back to the Twelve O'Clock High is one of my favorite film.




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It's certainly not true that there aren't any classic films in the top 250, but it's the most popular ones, such as "Citizen Kane" and "Double Indemnity." Most of the older films that are considered "Great" actually have quite a few votes (though not nearly as many as the most popular modern ones.)

I'm a teenager, I love "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy (I voted a ten for all three,) but I also voted a ten for "Twelve O'Clock High." They're very different films, but I love them both. (Of the 300 or more movies I've voted for on this site I've only given 30 or so "ten" ratings.)

The Top 250 doesn't really matter, nor does the AFI Top 100 or the Sight and Sound poll. The IMDb Top 250 is the most flawed list, especially in the area of foreign films. But through it, I've actually been introduced to many excellent movies I wouldn't have otherwise seen because they're too modern for most of those lists. I like to say this - an interested movie-goer would do well to see all the movies on the Top 250 and the other lists, and would get a pretty good idea of the history of cinema.

Note: The above comments are exclusively my opinion.

---Respect---

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For what it's worth, I'm 19, and my brother is 17. "Twelve O'Clock High" has been one of our mutual favorites for years. We soaked in the combat footage when we were younger, and appreciate the raw force of the emotion in this masterpiece today.

It's one of the best ever, indeed. And it's definitely ahead of its time in the way it portrays war...no propoganda, no hype...just death and victory and defeat in a repeating cycle. Saving Private Ryan in the air...and made 50 years ago.

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I'm 16, and a fan of Gregory Peck, so I decided to check this film out one morning. One of the best WII films I've ever seen. Definitely, as raptorbpw said, ahead of it's time.

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Why?

It doesn't deserve to be.

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"So why is it not in the top 250."

No CGI and Vin Diesel isn't in it. No rap stars either. The music isn't totally out of sync with the story. It's just not a bombing mission over Germany unless Ice-T is flying the plane, with Cop Killa blasting away in everyones headset.
This is what gets you in the top 250 now.

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I know some people who think if a movie is not in color it is not worth watching. And some people who don't have a clue what World War II was all about. Yet this movie could take place in any decade. Combat does not change. Bullets still do the same damage they did 60 years ago. And people still have to take that risk. I think more people would see the quality of this film if they gave it a chance. I'm glad I was born early enough to know about this war and what had to been done to win it.

My father was the navigator on a B-17 in the later years, when they didn't even bother to paint the planes. I got a chance to sit up front in a B-17, where my father would have been, during an air show in Wisconsin. A pexiglass bubble. No sense of anything holding you up. I felt dizzy just sitting there with plane on the ground. I can only imagine what it must have felt like several thousand feet in the air.

This movie makes me understand my father a little better. You could only sit there and wait for the mission to end. I guess he had his navigating to keep his mind busy during the long flight. But once your over the target only the pilots and bombadier are busy. Everyone else has a Fifty in their hands.

So it may not be in the top 250. We know how great this movie is or we would not be in this forum.

After seeing all the people post here I know I am not alone. I hope others find this forum.

Waffles Anyone
rstory-3

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12 0 CLOCK HIGH is a stone classic & belongs on ANY top 250 films of all time!! For sure!

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Various reasons. There are a whole lot of people out there who will not even look at a Black and White movie unless it is used as a gimmick in a new movie, incredible as it seems.

Also unless the film is hammered into the general publics head with repeated showings such as It's a Wonderful Life or various other christmas movies younger people have not even seen a movie made before 1980. BTW I use to be able to find A Christmas Carol playing on tv during the christmas holiday, not this year. Neither of the two older versions. I believe it might have came on once on TCM at some ungodly hour that if you were awake you might indeed get a real visit from Marley's Ghost. Heck I cannot even find old holiday stalwarts like David Copperfield and Great Expectations, not even Mr MaGoo's Christmas Carol during the hoidays. All we get is repeated versions of A Christmas Stoory and A Awonderful Life and some rebaked new versions of A Chrstmas Carol with Susan Lucci and Vanessa Williams playing female Scrooges.
No more Thanksgiving showings of King King Or Holloween Wind and the Willows with Bing Crosby singing the legend of Sleepy Hollow, nothing.

When I was young public tv regulary showed classics now they might show a old movie every once in a whilelike on a weekend night. I am looking at TOH now on a public tv station. And local tv stations like WOR, WPIX, WNEW in NY use to play old movies. We had something called the 12 o'clock movie on the local CBS station if I recall. I can hear the music for the 12 O'Clock movie, The Syncopated Clock playing now, it showed a old movie every night.

You would be hard pressed to find classics on AMC and Fox Movie Channel is starting to show junk. Only TCM shows the classic movies and where I live Cablevision just starting offering TCM maybe a year ago at the most.
Also my father loved old movies. If your parents are not interested you are not going to be. I have met 40 year olds who never heard of Bing Crosby! So I feel there are numerous reasons why this movie and other like this are not ijn the Top 250 of any movie list.

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IMDB is mostly inhabited by younger people that would put 'Batman Begins' way above an old movie like "12 O'clock High"

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I completely agree - I'm a 21 year old female, a complete world away from a film like this, and yet I thought it was absolutely phenomenal, one of the best war pictures I've ever seen. I was glued to the screen. I can't really put my finger on why it resonated so much with me, maybe it was the strength of the acting (Gregory Peck was *brilliant*), or the fact that it reminds me so much of my grandfather and others like him. Talking about the war with an incredibly brave face, yet still having nightmares in his sleep nearly seventy years on. A lot of other films of the time sweep the psychological damage of war under the rug for a happily ever after ending - this was a phenomenal portrayal of those horrific scars (on even the toughest of men) that may never be fully healed.

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Because the list is full of movies that aren't that great.

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